The locality of complete deafness sits in a ringing pile of depression on the couch in my front room. Together we try to crack the mystery code to sound. Sitting on my tongue like a nearly remembered phone number that keeps delivering me up to the wrong voice. Replacing digit for digit over again until nothing remotely familiar comes. Vain attempts to break silence with matching lips and eyes instead of reading them. In quiet, we refuse to acknowledge the stoned look on his face that wonders if the hearing will return. There's no way to tell him that he's editing the most fantastic picture I've ever seen him take. Or that I'm hungry and tired and need a shower. Convince myself the ringing will pull itself off slowly like morning bed sheets and the world will march loudly in again like the sun. We don't ever write notes to one another--that's what deaf people might do.